Followers of the Light

Chapter 2 - Sixty Minutes Past the End (6 PM)

I woke up on a hard surface, not knowing where I was, what time it was, thinking it was morning hour. Slowly, I felt something rough and heavy blanketed all over me. I breathed in. I opened my eyes when the dusty air choked my throat, kicking me back to consciousness and crawled myself out from a piled-up rubble. I madly coughed my lungs out as the dirt flew about.

After a long, painful cough, I panted hard like a dying dog. I sat down and looked at the darkness surrounding, trying to recollect what happened. My arms and legs were still mostly numb. And then I looked down on myself. My clothes were ripped here and there. My skin was painfully itchy from the sand sticking everywhere. I took my time to get on my weak feet and brushed them off. My head swung, it was difficult to stand straight. It was even hard to breath the air, felt like just wanna drop dead again. I leaned on a destroyed column to keep my head straight to see my surroundings again. Blinked my blurry eyes a few times, I saw nothing but ruins under the red night. Then a headache pierced in my skull as I tried to recollect my memory and that knocked me down back on my knees. I clawed my head with my dirty gloves trying to resist the deep excruciating pain. A few seconds later, I finally got a picture in my mind. I remembered I was standing on the second floor of the gym - at the same spot where I stood at.

I was idling there looking at the silent destroyed city while slowly regaining my memory from the last seconds. Roscenta; I had a call from her back then. I walked away from that spot to find her in our apartment. As my feet stepped on the cracking pavement, I wondered where I was at. I knew I was in Prosperistus. But I could not believe that it was Prosperistus, the city that never rests, always bright and alive, could be so grim and dark... and dead, I thought.

The foggy, dust-filled air made it difficult to walk. I had to keep one hand up to cover my nose. My eyes too were getting dry and itchy. It was dark, silent, and I had to keep blinking my eyes. Each careful step I took just loudly cracks that it made me nervous. Funny enough, right after I had that thought, I heard a heavy vehicle coming from somewhere behind. When the headlight filled the street, I turned around. My eyes were blinded by a speeding dump truck, kicking a thick cloud of fetid dust on my face. I brushed my hair back and opened my eyes a little as the truck continued its way further down. Had no idea who that was, but it relieved me that at leas there are people alive.

After going through the different-same path, I was finally back at my apartment. The building was always easy to spot from the chess-piece-shaped stone lanterns representing each block. There were five apartment blocks in total; mine was the middle one, called: The Bishop. We stayed in the third floor; the highest floor. It was always a sweet little home for me, but not anymore. Although the building was partially still standing, it was pretty much done for. I knew it, nobody inside there would survive judging from the situation, but still, I refused to believe it. Without spending anymore time outside, I walked inside onto the flights of staircase to the third floor. Reaching the front of the hallway, I sensed no sign of someone.

"Ros?" I called her in hope she was there.

I saw my living room, the ceiling – they barely looked like as they were. On my left, there used to be a wall that separates the bedroom and living room. It was reduced into a pile of debris then.

"Hold on! Hold on! Ros might be buried under these rubbles just like I was!" I talked to myself. "Window! She must be standing there when she called me!"

Yet there was nothing I could find underneath.

"Ros? Tell me if you're here!" I said at the empty space that used to be our home, insisted to see Ros survived. But the denial quickly fell off the ledge. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, trying to calm myself down. My chest felt too heavy to face the thing I would never want to see. I looked back at the living room with my watery eyes. The apartment was a total mess.